Way To Spam HubPages Now For SALE - sheesh!

1. 74

   Inspirepubposted 16 years ago

   I tried to email this to the HubPages team and it bounced - I pray that posting it here doesn't make the situation worse - please HubPages team take the link off as soon as you have read this.
   
   Hi HubPages team,
   
   I just got an email flogging this $47 software:
   
   socialmediainspector.com
   
   It targets high PR Hubs so people can spam comments onto them with links to their sites.
   
   Any chance you can work out a way to disable it for HubPages?
   
   If not, we're going to need captcha on the comments, because the next step will be having a robot place the comments ...
   
   Jenny
   
   P.S. How about putting "no follow" on all links in all comments? And saying so on the comment box?

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2. 75

   Lissieposted 16 years ago

   I have been gradually changing my comment capsules so that I have to approve comments before they are shown

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3. 74

   Inspirepubposted 16 years ago

   Manual approval is not a great method, because once the robots get going you have hundreds of spam comments to wade through each day.
   
   We have a spam filter on our blogs that does a pretty decent job, otherwise I would be doing nothing but hitting the "SPAM" button moderating comments for several hours a day!
   
   I am hoping we can convince them not to bother spamming us for back links by nofollowing links in comments - or better yet, that the team can buy the software and figure out how to block it!
   
   Jenny

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4. 59

   Mark Knowlesposted 16 years ago

   The links added to comment boxes are already nofollow aren't they?

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5. 86

   Isabella Snowposted 16 years ago

   Yes.
   
   And really, this is something which just goes right along with what I posted earlier about being able to flag hubbers -- assuming the advertised "technology" even works. Being able to flag an IP address would work just as well.

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6. STAFF

   pauldeedsposted 16 years ago

   If you mark a comment as spam, you are essentially flagging both the ip address and the user that posted it.  There is no need to do so separately.  Once enough evidence has accumulated they will be punished.

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7. 86

   Isabella Snowposted 16 years ago

   How many flaggings/marking as spam does that require? There have been numerous comments in the forums lately about flagging and flagging away to no avail. I had to mark comments from someone as spam probably 10 times before they started auto posting as spam -- and sometimes they still go through as non-spam from that person.

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8. STAFF

   pauldeedsposted 16 years ago

   There isn't an a particular number that will get an ip or user banned, it depends both on the quantity, the nature of the comments, and other "contributions" that they may have made.  The reality is, if you have a comments capsule (especially an open one) and you're hubs are reasonably popular you're always going to have to moderate out some spam and garbage.

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9. 74

   Inspirepubposted 16 years ago

   Well, I checked out Squidoo, and links in comments there don't even appear to be clickable, let alone followable.
   
   This software can't possibly deliver on its promises.
   
   i have written a Hub to that effect - here's hoping it hits the front page of the search engines right beside the sales letter page.
   
   http://hubpages.com/hub/Social-Media-Inspector-Scam
   
   Sigh.
   
   I guess there will still be a bunch of people who hand over their $47, no matter what we do ...

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